<!--emo&:furious--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/furious.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='furious.gif' /><!--endemo--> <span style='font-size:14pt;line-height:100%'><span style='font-family:Optima'><b>PMs or bus conductors
Starting from Gujral who started the 1st bus or perhaps, revived the train from India to Pakistan, followed by Vajpayee who became real bus conductor from Delhi to Lahore and carried on by Manmohan Singh who found a different route of bus conduction between POK and Kashmir and at the same time started had railway guard in the garb of Lalu between Rajasthan and ?Sindh. Will this be the History taught for posterity?
Please join me in
x3 hoots for them.
Jai Hind
Capt Manmohan Kumar </b></span></span>
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->http://www.saag.org/%5Cpapers20%5Cpaper1956.html
HAVANA LIKELY TO HAUNT US - B. Raman
"Battle fatigue has set in in New Dehi---particularly in the Prime Minister's Office and the Foreign Office."
<b>2. That is the way the Pakistani military-intelligence establishment, the Pakistan-based jihadi terrorist organisations, Al Qaeda and the International Islamic Front (IIF) formed by Osama bin Laden in February, 1998, are likely to misinterpret the Indo-Pakistani Declaration of Havana and the remarks of the Prime Minister, Dr. Manmohan Singh, and the Foreign Secretary designate Shri Shivshankar Menon and others before and after the Prime Minister's meeting with Pakistan's President Gen. Pervez Musharraf at Havana on September 16, 2006.
3. This misinterpretation is also likely to be strengthened by some of the observations made by New Delhi based experts---particularly some retired officers of our Foreign Service---on the significance of the agreement reached by our Prime Minister and Gen. Musharraf to set up an Indo-Pakistan anti-terrorism co-operation mechanism.
4. I was highly disturbed to hear a retired Foreign Secretary say on a TV channel: "We do not seem to be making any headway in our fight against terrorism. This (the mechanism) may help." These remarks will be misinterpreted in Islamabad as an admission by a retired Foreign Secretary that the Indian security agencies have proved themselves incapable of controlling jihadi terrorism. Let us take the help of the Pakistani agencies and see whether that helps.
Ever since Pakistan was born in 1947, ill-wishers of India in Pakistan---governmental and non-governmental, jihadi and non-jihadi--- have shown a penchant for misinterpreting and misreading India's mind and launching adventures, which took us by surprise, but ultimately proved disastrous for them. Those adventures were of a conventional kind such as the wars of 1965 and 1971 and the Kargil conflict of 1999. In matters of conventional conflict, we always had the upper hand.
In 1997, we threw away our covert card in a moment of misplaced generosity towards Pakistan and we have already paid a heavy price for it. However, we continued to retain the Psywar card. At Havana, the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary designate have thrown away even the Psywar card. This is likely to cost us dear.
Â
The worst of jihadi terrorism is not behind us. It is ahead of us. The Indian Police and security agencies are making valiant efforts to control the jihadis despite lack of satisfactory political backing from the leadership and operational backing from the Foreign Office. Their difficulties are likely to increase as a result of Havana.
15. Pakistan is a theocratic State founded on the belief that Hindus and Muslims cannot live together. We may call ourselves a secular state, but the Pakistanis look upon us as a Hindu State. If we think that a State with such beliefs will genuinely co-operate with us against jihadi terrorism, we will be living in a world of illusions.</b>Â
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--emo&  --><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/tongue.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='tongue.gif' /><!--endemo--> <span style='font-size:14pt;line-height:100%'><span style='font-family:Arial'>Let us see what happens when MMS reaches home. He has an easy way out: appoint a new MEA. MEA will be always in a bind:
if this policy is carried out, MEA takes the flak
if it's not carried out, MMS and MEA will be like MMS and Natwar.</span></span>
<!--emo&:blink:--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/blink.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='blink.gif' /><!--endemo--> PM foreign to real issues
Swapan Dasgupta
We are in that phase of a Government's life when Prime Ministers, and the retinue around them, start experiencing the monotony of national existence. When that happens, convention demands that the gaze of the Prime Minister's Office is conveniently diverted to "pressing international concerns"- with pleasurable consequences.
For the past two months, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has displayed an over-weaning anxiety to optimise his air-miles. First, there was the long haul to Brazil, followed by the quixotic sojourn in Havana - the high point being Fidel Castro's reminiscences of PL-480 shipments to India. Then there was the Gandhigiri trip to South Africa - a visit which intrigued the hosts and confused the Zulu protestors in Durban. (question for Kaun Banega Crorepati 3: Which Indian Prime Minister in recent times hasn't visited the railway station in Pietermaritzburg?)
Last week, the Prime Minister was in England to collect an honorary doctorate from Cambridge. True, there was also a courtesy call on Tony Blair and the mandatory conviviality with the same businessmen he met two days before in Mumbai, but these were obligatory add-ons to confer an official gloss on a worthwhile private visit.
Yet, there is no need to be accusatory. Prime Ministers have made foreign visits for far flimsier reasons. In 2002, Atal Bihari Vajpayee spent two agreeable days in Cyprus, en-route to an avoidable India-EU summit in Copenhagen. The only apparent reason was to release a Greek translation of his poetry!
Of course, Manmohan could have made much more of his well-deserved honour from Cambridge. After all, how many Indian notables can match his scholarly credentials? Unlike him, most of those using the prefix Doctor possess honorary degrees.
Last year in Oxford he provoked xenophobes at home with a subtle endorsement of the "coconut" trail, his thank you speech. Last week's Cambridge performance was unmentionably soporific. It was dotted with the pedestrian eloquence of the JNU kind: "The gap between the rich and the poor is widening... My appeal is that developed countries should not allow short-term national interests to prevail at the cost of promoting freer trade and combating poverty. The prosperity of so many cannot be sacrificed for protecting the interests of so few." There were also the adulatory references to Jawaharlal Nehru - the head of the family - and Joan Robinson, the socialist economist whose dogmatic influence set the Indian economy back by many decades.
No wonder the Cambridge address secured the ungrudging approval of the certifying authority of progressivism: The Hindu.
Then it was off to what business journalists call the Nokia junket. Normally, Finland is not on any itinerary but this year Helsinki was hosting yet another India-EU summit. A prime ministerial visit to a Scandinavian country is best avoided. It is one thing for the Indian Prime Minister to engage periodically - even if it is by way of a courtesy call en-route to Cambridge - with someone like Blair who knows India, acknowledges its global significance and, most important, is totally at ease with Indian sensitivities; dealing with sanctimonious Scandinavians is a different ball game.
Being unable to comprehend the clutter of Indian democracy and the array of the Indian experience, the countries of northern Europe have been accustomed to treating India on par with say, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, bywords for ethnic strife and poverty.
As exporters of conflict resolution and foreign aid, they have never quite grasped India's nuclear imperatives nor really understood why President George Bush insists on treating New Delhi differently from Pyongyang. Four years ago, Vajpayee was subjected to a gratuitous Viking sermon on Kashmir and last week Manmohan had to undergo the ignominy of the Finnish Prime Minister sitting in judgment on India's nuclear programme.
The issue is not why the Finns are the way they are; the problem lies in India running after foreign testimonials. To justify a grand visit with full entourage, the flatterers prepared the curious headline: "Finland supports Indo-US nuke deal"; what they got instead was "Finland snubs India." Pity no one asked the Finns about India's permanent membership of the UNSC!
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<!--emo&  --><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/sad.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='sad.gif' /><!--endemo--> Vajpayee, Advani quarreling: PM
Express News ServicePosted online: Thursday, November 02, 2006 at 0000 hrs Print Email
THIRUVANANTHAPURAM, NOV 1: Taking an unusual dig at the goings-on in the Opposition BJP, PM Manmohan Singh today said that Vajpayee and Advani were quarreling with each other.
âThough two-and-a-half-years have gone, the Opposition had not many issues to fight (us). That is why they are quarreling with each other. Vajpayee is quarreling with Advani and Advani with Vajpayee. But we will remain sincere to our promises,â he told a Congress convention here, asking people to be alert against forces trying to divide society on communal, caste and class lines when the country was marching forward.
And in a veiled dig at the Left partiesâ charge that the Centreâs policies were responsible for Keralaâ woes, he said that the blame should not be put on the UPA government but elsewhere. Alluding to Left criticism of his efforts to improve ties with the US marked a radical policy shift.
âSometimes confusion is sought to be created that there has been a change in foreign policy. In terms of our basic objectives, there is no change.â India, he said, wanted âthe goodwill and cooperation of big powers like the US, Russia and Chinaâ but this did not mean there was a shift from âbasic policies followed since the days of Jawaharlal Nehru.â
Singh dismissed the argument that globalisation and imports were behind the periodic crises in plantation and traditional sectors.âWe must tackle the problem of these crops not by shutting doors but by applying modern science and technology to improve yields and productivity,â he said.
editor@expressindia.com
<b>PM favours 'fair share' for minorities in government jobs</b><!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->"This nation does not belong to any single race, least of all to any group of religious extremists," he said urging people to "work for a systematic reconstruction of our multi-racial policy and society".<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Somebody ask this Moron Singh PM of India, Which race he is talking? I think one he learnt in Oxford. This man is suffering from foot in mouth disease, his Madam is from different race, she thinks with race glass, but Moron Singh is moron no doubt.
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